Quote collection
626 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"North Korea is a necrocracy, or a mauselocracy or a thanatocracy in which the one [Kim Il-sung] is diffused into being with the other [Kim Jong Il], and where both of them are said to have had miraculous births attended by miraculous phenomena such as, for example, birds singing in Korean, when they were born."
"America was not interventionist enough, which, of course, did mean a bit of a breach with old comrades on the left. I felt the international left in the countries concerned took the same position as I did. So, in my view, it's the left that's become reactionary and isolationist and parochial."
"The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal."
"My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends."
"I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way."
"Haven't we all heard some irritating person saying that if so-and-so is elected, then he/she is absolutely definitely leaving the country? There must be some reason why it is mainly liberals who tend to say this, but the chief thing to note about the promise is that it is usually an empty one."
"Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, "Created sick Commanded to be well." And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail."
"When I am at home, I never go near the synagogue unless, say, there is a bar or bat mitzvah involving the children of friends. But when I am traveling, in a country where Jewish life is scarce or endangered, I often make a visit to the shul."
"When the [US] president writes to Kim Jong Il, the son, the Dear Leader, he doesn't call him Dear Mr President, he calls him Dear Mr Secretary. Have you ever noticed that? Why is that? Because he's not the president of North Korea, he's the head of the Communist Party, the North Korean Workers' Party and he's the head of the Army. He's not head of the state. The head of the state is his father, who's been dead for 15 years."
"I was taught very early on that the state can be, and is, a liar and a murderer."
"The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home."
"The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it's American or British interests involved."
"Only the force of American arms, or the extremely credible threat of that force, can bring a fresh face to power."
"A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people's hope."
"There is no reason at all why there aren't enough people to guard New Orleans and to help stabilise Baghdad."
"The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned."
"You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it's the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there's not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed."
"[Even if the U.S. doesn't attack] Saddam Hussein is not going to survive. His regime is on the verge of implosion."
"There is a division within the neo-conservative movement, which is, by the way, one of the tests of its authenticity as a tendency. I would say I was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz."
"The death toll is not nearly high enough... too many [jihadists] have escaped."